In a network management system which monitors and controls equipment, such as air-conditioning equipment and lighting equipment in a building or a house, setup processing an address setup, a connection setup, etc. of the equipment is conventionally performed by a specialized setup machine linked to the network or a specialized node for performing a system management.
Generally, as the network for equipment, such as air-conditioning equipment and lighting equipment, is mostly built as a closed configuration in a narrow area like a building or a house, workers need to go there each time for performing a setup of each network. Moreover, especially in facilities equipment, as many machines of the same model are often connected to the same network, the same setup processing needs to be repeatedly performed for a large number of equipment. Therefore, there is a problem that a great many man-hours are needed and setup errors may easily happen.
A conventional network management system for solving the above mentioned problem is now explained referring to FIG. 7. FIG. 7 shows the configuration of the conventional network management system disclosed in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. JP 2000-74707, as an example.
A sensor apparatus 1 connected to a network 2, such as Ethernet, can perform interactive communications with another sensor apparatus 1 connected to the same network 2 or with an upper rank host 3 composed of a personal computer etc., through the network 2. Namely, sensing information (data) for which signal processing has been done can be transmitted to the network 2, and various data and control commands can be received through the network 2. Each sensor apparatus 1 and the upper rank host 3 build a bus network, and information can be transmitted to and received from an optional party.
Besides, it is possible to set up all sensor apparatuses belonging to the same group or all sensor apparatuses which work under the same or similar environment by doing tuning processing once, and it is also possible to automatically configure all the sensor apparatuses, without having any adjustment operation and on-the-spot adjustment, at the time of exchanging the sensor apparatus or adding a new sensor apparatus. Namely, configuration data obtained by tuning up one sensor apparatus 1 (for example, sensor apparatus A) is uploaded to the upper rank host 3, and other sensor apparatuses (for example, sensor apparatuses B and C) download the configuration data which the sensor apparatus A uploaded through the network 2 and use the downloaded configuration data for their own use.
Thus, it is sufficient for other sensor apparatuses B and C only to download data in order to perform a configuration, and tuning processing such as a concrete teaching becomes unnecessary to be performed. The uploaded configuration data is stored and retained in an external storage 4 connected to the upper rank host 3.
As mentioned above, it is disclosed in the conventional art that setup processing and a setup error can be reduced by uploading setup information of equipment to the upper rank host through the network after having set up the equipment and downloading the setup information to other equipment. However, at least a basic initial processing, that is a setup of one sensor apparatus (equipment), needs to be performed at the place of the sensor apparatus.
The present invention aims to solve the above mentioned subject and problem. An object of the present invention is to obtain a network management system where setup processing of the target network can be done at other network, which enables a network setup to be performed from a remote place, and to obtain a network management system where setup information is not combined information of a setup value and setup data peculiar to a maker or a network system, which enables the network management system to flexibly respond to various networks.